A clustering technique to analyse anonymous systems

Abstract

Concerns about privacy and anonymity have gained more and more attention in conjunction with the rapid growth of the Internet as a means of communication and information dissemination. A number of anonymous communication systems have been developed to protect the identity of communication participants. Nevertheless, it is important to provide ways to evaluate and measure the level of anonymity provided. We introduce in this report the use of hierarchical clustering technique to analyse anonymous systems. We propose a new measure to evaluate anonymous systems by introducing the concept of dominant cluster. We further show that using this measure will overcome the limitations of other existing measures.